October 18

Franchising is one of the main driving forces of our nation’s economy. It is largely comprised of many small businesses and franchisees who employ a great deal of people from coast to coast to coast. In fact, Franchising accounts for about 4% of Canada’s annual GDP. In this issue we speak with the Canadian Franchise Association’s chairman John DeHart about the impact franchising has across virtually every business industry. It’s our cover story this month.

$1 billion. That’s how much the stifling metals tariffs have cost Ford Motor Co. to date, according to CEO James Hackett. This is in spite of the fact that most of the metals have been delivered from American suppliers. We all need to hope that negotiations between Canada and the U.S. reach an amicable conclusion. If this needless trade war isn’t resolved it is going to cause undue economic hardship in Canada, but the U.S. as well. None of this makes any sense.

Time Magazine has been sold by Meredith Corp. to Marc Benioff, a co-founder of Salesforce, for $190 million.

Meredith Corp. is also the publisher of such magazines as People and Better Homes & Gardens. It is currently in negotiations to sell three other publications — Fortune, Money and Sports Illustrated.

Google – the internet overlord – acknowledges it has made “mistakes” on privacy issues in testimony made by an executive of the Alphabet Inc unit. The remarks were delivered to a U.S. Senate committee.

“We acknowledge that we have made mistakes in the past, from which we have learned, and improved our robust privacy program,” Google chief privacy officer Keith Enright said in written testimony.

So, yes the world’s most powerful internet search engine is better than just guessing correctly. In 2012, Google agreed to pay a then-record $22.5 million civil penalty to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it misrepresented to Apple Safari Internet browser users that it would not place tracking cookies or serve them targeted ads. Then this past August, Alphabet was sued and accused of illegally tracking movements of millions of iPhone and Android phone users even when they use a privacy setting to prevent it.

Did you know?… Time Magazine’s first issue came out in March, 1923 with the now-obscure former U.S. House Speaker Joseph Cannon on the cover.